Friday, November 18, 2005

Boomsticks: Oh, the shame...

As many people know, S&W has decided to come out with a new polymer service pistol that they have named, with no respect for tradition, the "M&P".

For those who don't have the backstory, "M&P" (or "Military & Police") is the official moniker of the fixed-sight K-frame .38 Special revolver that S&W has had in constant production since 1899 (its current catalog designation is Model 10-12, signifying the 12th engineering change to the Model 10 since 1957,) and which was the nearly-universal law enforcement sidearm in America for most of that past century, as well as being used by armed forces around the free world. More than 6,000,000 of them have been produced in that time, many during WWII, when they were called the "Victory Model". The new executive team at S&W seems to think that, like Harley-Davidson, "heritage" is Smith's most valuable commodity, hence the hanging of this hallowed old moniker on a newfangled plastic po-po gun.

Here're some possible suggestions for future developments of this line from S&W:

ZING! I got an old 1903-04 M&P 1st change, it's a real sweetheart, also a real triple-lock among my infinitely tiny collection, more an accidental accumulation than a collection really but there's no plastic or black guns. Maybe one of these days.

It's a sad day when a company rapes it's own heritage to make a buck. So which police force and which military uses this plastic fantastic? The Model of 1905 earned the moniker M&P, this pistol was given the name by the marketing department.

"...but I no longer understand what people have against polymer... oh well."

It's not that I necessarily have anything against polymer, but I do get annoyed at some of the sillier "Heritage" based marketing attempts.

Take, for example, S&W's recent flop, the "Heritage Series" revolvers, most of which had case-colored frames. Old Smiths didn't have case colored frames, so why didn't they just call the new guns the "Vaguely Old-Timey-Looking Series" instead?

It's actually up to Model 10-14. I bought one new last spring, and that's what it says on the frame.

Nice handy revolver. Nothing fancy, but one of my most accurate shooters. Puts those six .38s right where you want them to go. Gun Tests reviewed a new Model 10 last year and got average groups of around 1.5" at 25 yards. I'm confident mine would match that.

Anyone think the "cutting edge" plastic M&P autoloader is going to be able to hang with those numbers? Remotely?